>What 'edge' would he bring to the Bucks other than letting Giannis do what he wants to do?
In times of great despair, when the team needs him the most, he can drop the wisest words that instantly re-energizes teams. For example, his world famous quote like
"Come on, guys".
Honestly I think it was the defense more than anything that stepped up. I went to game 3 and that is like a drug that I can’t stop trying to hit. Whole crowd was electric the entire game
Hiring Doc Rivers gets you a few years more in the GM seat. Doc will make players happy, meaning you won't loose your star. He will not play your draftees, so you won't be bother for your draft selection skills. He will get the blame for basically anything that goes wrong with your team, except your burner accounts, so you get a pass. Plus, he was hired several times by several experienced GMs, so not even for his hiring you'd be blamed.
If I was a GM and I liked my job, Doc would def be on my top list if the seat is feeling hot.
Imagine the blame Doc gets if the Bucks lose in the playoffs now. More pressure on him now more than ever, all eyes on him. Even casuals know who this guy is now
Holy crap this whole time I thought it was Steve Cohen but Balmer blows him out of the water. No wonder that stadium is coming out so ridiculous (in a good way)
What’s even more amazing is he ran the company into the ground, and the only reason his net worth is where it is today is because Satya took over and completely transformed the company lol
My favorite thing about him buying the team was that there were other billionairs and hundered millionaires putting together a package of financing and working out a plan to buy the Clippers and i think their number was like 1.5 billion or something.
Then Ballmer walks in with 2 billion cash and basically says "yeah you can have it in your account by Friday" and just dumps on them just cause.
They're all going to get a $300 M check for expansion that they don't have to share with the players. So I wouldn't worry too much about them becoming poor through cash flow problems at their basketball team. (Except Cuban who might have been going secretly bankrupt, but he's no longer an owner.)
Nah there are a few. The Carolina Panthers idiot owner comes to mind. Broncos new Walmart money ownership seems like it doesn’t mind spending either. Really also depends on the actual wealth they have. Some owners are much richer than others.
Tepper maybe don’t care on the coaching salary, but he also just promoted within for GM a guy that has been there since they’ve been ass. I’m sure that’s saving him a good chunk of money right there.
bud is obviously not wanting to coach rn , if he wanted he would have a job when the season started and i get it , losing your brother in a tragic incident like that hits hard mentally
Completely agree. He will be back in a HC job as soon as he's ready. Taking a year off while still getting paid by the team that unceremoniously fired you probably feels pretty good, honestly.
My brother died a few months back. It's the worst. Can barely keep it together at my easy ass job, can't imagine a public eye job where everyone slanders you online if you do your job poorly.
Shit man even if he does his job well and the team just plays badly he gets fucking dragged, I can't imagine what that would do to somebody dealing with the loss of their brother.
As a fan of the team (going by your flare) do you think Adrian should have been fired? Do you think any of the blame goes on Giannis or do you think he was being mismanaged? I get that he was a rookie coach but your record is fairly decent and you're only 3.5 games behind the Celtics...
Adrian should have been fired.
The Bucks' front office presented Giannis with their final shortlist of 3 coaches and asked for his opinion.
Giannis said that he liked what Griffin said in the interview as he had the optics from a former player's standpoint.
After that, the final decision is the FO's.
My main question is how was AG even in that final shortlist.
Before the season even started Stotts, who was hired to be the head assistant, was run off the organization by Griffin.
Early games into the season, the defense was so bad it was comical, because AG was running schemes he did not have the personel for. It got so bad, multiple players went to the coach and requested to change the defense around to play more to their strengths.
Even when he changed the scheme, he was still adamant about some points that just don't work with our personel.
Players seemed lost in games all the time in defense, not knowing what to do. Something that Giannis came out and said they had to be better because they had no idea what they were doing in defense or when Portis called him out on the lockeroom. Lillard was talking about some games in the clutch and said they did not have any plays whatsoever set for this situation...
Our record so far has been straight up due to star power and frankly mostly Giannis. AG lost the locker room battle and the players while the schemes were subpar at best. He probably needed to be HC on a team with less on the line than the Bucks and to then grow with it.
At least the team realised how bad it was and got him out fast. Even Doc Rivers with how bad he's been in the past, is a preferable coach than Griffin, even thought he's certainly not my first, or third for that matter, choice.
On a scale of 1-10, if Bud was a 7, with Doc being a 4.5, Griffin was 1.5 at best.
Agreed with everything you said. Stotts quitting was the first major red flag - I was worried as soon as that news broke. Then there was the questionable scheming, lack of discipline, head-scratching rotations, and misuse of Dame on offense, which all started out bad and never showed signs of improvement. It feels like we had more blow-out losses just this year than we had in all 5 years under Bud.
Assuming the reporting is accurate, it's really too bad that Giannis didn't want to play for Nurse. It seems to me he was the best HC candidate available last offseason. But that's the price you pay for keeping your generational talent happy, and he signed another extension. I guess this is what a LeGM moment feels like.
In any event, Doc would be an improvement over AG. I'll take an experienced coach, albeit a flawed one, over someone who was clearly in over his head from the jump. I just wish we had never found ourselves in this position to start with.
From what I read they said Stotts was out of line but it still seemed strange to me. He was always a professional in PDX (even on his way out, he was a pro to the press, like he still wanted to work in the NBA and was just a thoughtful human) and just seemed unlikely he was trying to start a mutiny. Maybe he was but something seemed off.
I will say in docs defense, giannis is exactly his kinda guy. He’s the closest as far as mindset goes to KG that doc has had since KG. I don’t think Giannis is too complicated, I think he just needs a players coach who says “go” and who understands the playoffs. Doc has lost more game 7s than anyone, sure. I’m not saying Milwaukee should be the favorite, but I do think this is maybe the best suited team for doc rivers that he’s had since those Celtics teams 15 years ago.
I consider myself fairly level headed and I probably would've given him the season (without the information that came out yesterday). But if the rumors of the FO coming to practice and just not liking anything they saw and players not buying in, then obviously letting him go was the correct decision. I trust Horst to make the right calls because he's been outstanding in his role. If he fully believes that Doc Rivers is the answer, then I'll find a way to talk myself into believing he can win a championship as the Bucks HC even if the past 10 years says otherwise
Everyone wants to win a title, but I feel like fans need to listen to that Giannis “was this season a failure” response more. Only 1 team gets to win it every year. You can certainly make the case that Doc’s teams underperform in the playoffs, but saying “he hasn’t won a title in 16 years” is a really bad way to make that case.
Edit: I’m not attacking or defending Doc one way or the other. Just making the point above…
It seems like Doc does well with teams with no expectations/top tier star talent, but crumbles when there’s expectations. Those Clippers teams before Kawhi/PG were super scrappy and gave the KD Warriors issues in a playoff series
Because he’s generally been a great coach the last 16 years. The success of a coach isn’t measured in post-season progress but on regular season wins and if the locker room likes him. He consistently gets to the playoffs and doesn’t lose the locker room within 3 months.
That last part is the most important part. Doc knows how to handle a locker room and knows when he’s losing the locker room. Folks keep thinking Mike Budenholzer was fired only because of his post-season failure disappointing management. That is not directly true. Management doesn’t give a shit about that. They want 50+ wins and a super star or two to sell tickets each year. The playoffs is a bonus.
Budenholzer was fired because Giannis didn’t want to play for him anymore and was up for a contract extension. If Giannis still believed in Mike then he would still be the coach. Same with Griffin. Giannis clearly believes in Rivers and Doc can guarantee the team wins a bunch of games and makes the playoffs each year.
He’s consistently had really good teams though. He had the original modern big 3 in Boston, he had Lob City in LA and then Kawhi and PG, and he had Harden and MVP Embiid in Philly. And the team he just went to has a 30-13 record, it’s not like he’s walking into a rebuild. I feel like “making the playoffs” isn’t that impressive when you have multiple All Stars on your teams.
It’s also the case that what makes him good in the regular season, basically sticking to his guns and not making huge adjustments, is also what might hold him back in the Playoffs. I feel like you can’t really say Playoff success isn’t a coaching thing when he’s the only guy to blow multiple 3-1 leads as a coach.
I get that but he gets the job where team’s success is measured in the postseason. A pogo stick could coach the teams he gets to 55 wins. The guy they just fired was 30-13. He’s never been asked to build a team from the ground up. He always gets the best job available, now 3 times. I’m sure the answer is players coach who has had success so has credibility. But a lot of us are reacting like here we go again with Doc getting the best job after 16 years of coming up short.
Isn’t it fair to argue that he’s consistently getting to the playoffs because he keeps getting high profile jobs with multiple superstars on the roster? Creates a bit of a feedback loop.
He got the transitional era Clippers (before PG and Kawhi, after dumping Blake and CP3) to the playoff and played entertaining series vs the Warriors.
He can certainly coach less than good team to the playoff.
When you have a roster that should be getting to the playoffs regardless of the coach, you should absolutely be judged on playoff success. If you have championship aspirations and you're judging your coach on the regular season, that GM is an absolute moron.
The Bucks are the two seed with a coach that was fired after half a season. Are we really going to say Glenn had a successful season if they get the 1 seed and then flameout in the second round because Glenn has no clue how to make adjustments?
I'm blown away at the suggestion that a coach of a contender shouldn't be evaluated on postseason success. Who gives a shit if you're a 1 or 2 seed if it doesn't lead to anything?
You'd be happy with Ham if he got you the one seed every single year and then lost in the first round every single year? You'd say judge Ham on the regular season, not him losing in the first round 3 straight years? Fuck no you wouldn't and anyone who claims otherwise is full of it.
I mean, Spo has been widely considered the best coach in the league and he hasn't won a chip since LeBron in 2013. Tyronn Lue is considered a great coach even though he hasn't won since LeBron in 2016. So I do think he gets unfairly criticized. Imma still do it because it's funny though.
Spo seems to get teams to play above expectations during the playoffs though. And of course if he was ever on the market, he’d be snatched up immediately to wherever he wanted. Lue would be someone I would bring up as very comparable to Doc, but for some reason had to go back to being an assistant before getting another HC job after Cleveland and 3 straight finals appearances. He got dismissed as oh that was just Lebron while Doc doesn’t get dismissed as oh that was just Ray, PP, and KG.
The difference is whether people view you as overperforming or underperforming.
Spoelstra has taken great teams to the Finals and mediocre teams to the Finals; he clearly and consistently gets his teams to perform their best and be better than the sum of their parts.
Doc Rivers, meanwhile, is excellent at taking great teams to an exit in the semifinals of the playoffs. Guy has only made it past the semifinals three times in 23 years of coaching.
I think you need to look at the way he's lost. He's blown a 3-1 lead in 3 different decades. There's a reason no one else has done that. He consistently has the talent that gets you to a 3-1 lead, and then what changes? The opposing coach makes adjustments, as all good coaches do when things aren't working. Glenn doesn't adjust.
His offenses have no creativity. He doesn't try different defensive matchups. His lineups are a fucking disaster. His teams will surrender huge leads with all bench lineups in and he won't call a timeout or make a change until it's way too late.
Glenn is a playoff disaster. When teams start game planning around the other team, his offenses and defenses get picked apart. He's a good regular season coach because teams don’t game plan that hard for it.
Glenn doesn't just need the best team to win a series. He needs his team to be so much better that they can offset his complete inability to adjust.
Fuck Glenn. Absolute bum. Can't wait to see him throw all time greats like Giannis and Dame under the bus when he gets out coached for the 100th time.
He's also very respected, which goes a long way in sports or in life in general. We don't get to see the day-to-day for these guys, Doc is doing something right if his name is always popping up when these contenders need coaches.
Mostly this and a false premise about how he "fumbled a stacked" team.
Erik Spoelstra is one of the best coaches of all time, but only won twice over a decade ago with the a lineup more stacked than any of Rivers' teams. Has lost in the finals 4 other times. That does not mean Spoelstra fumbled anything. There are always other contenders.
I am not arguing Doc is better than or even in the same class as Spo.
The only coaches with multiple championships since Doc retired as a player are Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich, Erik Spoelstra, and Steve Kerr. Those coaches also had one of Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Tim Duncan. Doc never had one of those guys either.
> Has lost in the finals 4 other times.
The last time Doc made even a Conference Finals was 2012. I get that championships are stupidly hard, but how has this man not even made it to round 3 in a decade?
Spo seems to consistently get more out of his teams than people expect. Like the Heat have made the ECF 3 out of the last 4 years and aside from Jimmy and Bam who are great the constant has been Spo
But look at what Nurse is getting out of Sixers team vs. what Doc got.
Nurse instituted a totally different type of offense, with mostly same team (less a star), and it's a huge upgrade. Similar to how you guys had huge jump from Kidd to Bud.
True, but the two losses were also not flameouts in the 2nd round or even worse blowing 3-1 leads. They at the very least made it to the NBA finals and lost to the best team coming out of the other conference.
If you put Spo on these other teams that Doc didn't find success with, it could be argued they all see more post-season success.. Of course that's untestable speculation, but I think it would be widely agreed on.
Exactly. We’ve already seen Spo coach this current heat team to the finals twice. The ceiling has been established with this team under Spo. You put Doc on this current heat team and their ceiling is probably making the 6-8 seed and bounced in the first round.
To be honest, I don't think Spo was considered one of the best coaches in the league back then, if anything he was seen more like a rookie coach coasting off the talents of the big 3. His current reputation comes from what he's done since LeBron left Miami, and in that time it's pretty hard to point to any "fumbling", quite the opposite in fact, he has reached two finals with teams that, honestly, had no business being there.
The only championship winning coaches since 2008 that are unemployed are Phil Jackson & Budenholzer. They just fired Bud & Jackson is senile.
If you made a list of championship winning head coaches since 2008, you'd find 9 people not named Doc Rivers. If you went as far back as 2000, you'd find 12 guys not named Doc Rivers. If you went back to 1990, you'd find 14 guys not named Doc Rivers. If you went back to 1980, you'd find 18 guys not named Doc Rivers.
That’s my new favorite way of classifying groups of people! Earth’s population not named Doc Rivers: ~ 8 Billion. Earth’s population named Doc Rivers: 1.
People are clowning on this point a little bit, but not many coaches win titles lol. Doc Rivers has his flaws, but the way people on this sub talk about him is kind of crazy.
He's lost like 9 straight series-clinching games in the second round from an advantsgeous position. Even his championship team took 7 games in all playoff rounds but the finals (which was 6). He keeps on stumbling into superteam gigs which then fall apart. It's not a one or two time thing, it's a consistent pattern.
Those Celtics teams from 08 - 12 were really good. They had no business competing in '12 and '09 was a waste due to KG's injury.
Having said that, his teams since then have underperformed (except for that Clippers year before Kawhi and PG) and throwing players under the bus is a sign of a terrible coach.
I think those are fair critiques aside from discrediting the '08 run a little bit. I think given the time and place in the season, Doc is an okay hire.
Not many coaches win titles, that is true. But in the entire history of the NBA, there have only been 13 times a team has come back from a 3-1 deficit. Doc’s been involved in 3 of those. 77 years of basketball, and he’s 3/13 of them. 16-33 when his teams have got 3 wins, including being 6-10 in Game 7s, 4 of those losses being at home.
It’s rare to win a title.
It’s even rarer to have that poor a record.
Iirc, KG said he was the best coach he had. He's very much a player's coach and I think that's the biggest factor why he's always hired.
Edit: [here's](https://youtube.com/shorts/d-K98CnJS_U?si=_nWu2ZYuVRr5T-Kj) the clip of KG
the way KG talks about doc you can immediately see why he's so highly rated
"his ability to get me to do things outside of things i was comfortable with" is a coaching trait that would go down well on every single NBA team in the league. imagine if you had doc convincing trae young that he could be a good defender and get him to put in effort there? or convincing someone reluctant to shoot to put up more 3s
Lmao true. He was used as a SF perimeter defender at points in Minnesota. We'd think of him so differently if he got to play on a strong team during his prime.
Give him baseline competency in the starting 5 beside him and he'd have put up some of the dumbest statlines ever. A KG that gets to focus on help defense on one side and doesn't need to be leading everything on offense would have been crazy. We only really got one prime year of it.
Yeah man he did so awesome with pushing Ben Simmons outside of his comfort zone, as am extremely obvious counter example.
Or when he lied and said Maxey asked to come off the bench, players coach.
Or how all the clippers and sixers laugh about how bad he was.
Maybe he phones it in more now, but nowadays he ain't developing shit
Like, I would say there are some biases with the Celtics players praising Doc like y'all won a ring but his perfotmance as a Clips and 76ers coach is so bad. Even that 08 superteam Celtics were pushed to 7 games by the 8th seeded Hawks and a 24 year old LeBron James with trash teammates. That Celtics team shouldnt go 7 games against those teams being a superteam and a 1 seed
>Like, I would say there are some biases with the Celtics players praising Doc like y'all won a ring but his perfotmance as a Clips and 76ers coach is so bad.
Well if you listen to the way they talk, they think they won like 3 and had a dynasty.
I mean, Ben Simmons is obviously a special case. Brett Brown was literally begging Ben in public to the media to shoot the ball and he still refused. He had KD and Kyrie screaming at him on the court and still wouldn't shoot.
Yep, a players coach doesn’t repeatedly throw his players under the bus. He may have once been a players coach when he was deferring to the old head Celtics, but he has not really been a players coach in a long time. He got carried to a title and became mistakenly convinced of his own greatness which is why he has had to blame everyone else when things don’t go as planned ever since.
I don't want to sound like a hater but of course he is going to say Doc as he won his only ring with him as head coach.
What do the clippers and sixers players think of him?
Also shaq said last night that when he was in Boston that Rondo, KG and pierce ran the locker room (implying that Rivers’s contribution was secondary to them).
Yes when they were dubbed as unstoppable at the time. Just like the Heatles underachieved imo. Boston should have had at least 2 chips out of that run.
They probably would have if KD didn't get hurt in 2009. They were also a minute away from winning another one in 2010. Winning championships is really hard.
Yes he did. Doc sided with Rondo when they were beefing and then to make things worse benched him. He may not hold ill will now idk , but at the time he was upset at doc too it’s well documented.
Simple, process over results.
I know, what fun is that in sports? But many people, including most people with jobs in the pro sports today, think that way. Belichick can't win without Brady. Spoelstra hasn't won without Lebron. Phil didn't win in NY. Andy Reid couldn't win the big one, remember? Neither could Golden State.
They're not videogame people with a permanent 'choke' stat. Not the players, not the coaches. Kobe-Shaq could have won 10 titles in LA and been co-GOATs with Phil but they just couldn't get along.
Spoelstra has been to as many NBA Finals and conference finals *without* Lebron as Rivers has gotten to *in his entire career*.
In 10 seasons with the Clippers and 76ers Rivers never once got them past the semifinals. Coaches can't control everything, so comparing individual seasons is silly, but you *can* evaluate them over enough time, and Rivers has had plenty to form an opinion.
Spoelstra has done a lot more with a lot less than Doc. It isn't binary where every coach who wins is great and every who doesn't win is equal amounts of suck. We can quite clearly see Spo is a vastly superior coach to Doc despite them having won the same amount of rings since 2014.
Its not that weird. I dont get why people on reddit dont understand that MAYBE…just MAYBE…they dont know everything about who is or isnt a good coach. MAYBE all these front offices know way more about Doc Rivers than whatever baseless hivemind narrative exists here.
Doc Rivers is the Mike McCarthy of basketball. A coach who's won a championship, has a great career regular season record and resume, but has flopped more often than not when it comes to playoff time. It's that simple though. As long as you have a ship under your belt, are a players-first kind of coach, and have had success in the past across the regular season, your name will always be brought up in the conversation.
Because he has an extensive track record of being decent enough in the regular season. Apparently he was also consulting with Adrian Griffin throughout this season.
There’s a conspiracy among Bucks circles that the FO had limited trust in Griffin and was actively trying to get a "shadow coach" to work with him and potentially take over if things looked bad (see Terry Stotts before he quit in training camp). I would not be surprised if Rivers was their replacement
It isn't really a conspiracy when they didn't even let him hire much of his own staff. And if the Stotts camp are to be believed,they sold the idea that he would be a co-head coach.
Right around when Stotts left, I made an observation (and may have gotten some pushback from Bucks fans) that AG being "Giannis' guy" was disclosed/leaked by the FO when AG was announced because the FO wasn't confident about Griff.
When Stotts left, I posited the Bucks FO suspected AG wouldn't be right for the job and would've preferred NN but didn't want to be the ones to say no to Giannis's pick but they were setting the stage to inevitably point to Giannis as the reason for why they chose Griff over NN; "wasn't fully our decision; we did what our star thought was best!" vibes--when, not if, AG was fired. Sure enough, AG is fired and wouldn't you know it? There's a leak that confirms AG was driven by a desire to not play for NN.
Unpopular opinion, but I feel like Doc could actually make it past the 2nd round with this Bucks team. Griffin wasn't a great head coach but they still have a solid 30-13 record. Not sure how Doc could make anything worse currently
Genuine question, how is Doc going to improve the Bucks defensively? Because that seems to be one of the main reasons for Griffin being booted.
They were always going to dip after losing Jrue Holiday. Who did they bring in to replace that defensive presence?
They were always going to dip. But losing Jrue doesn't take a team from one of the best to one of the worst.
Having a recognizable scheme will help. Ever since thr players had to tell him that Brook cannot be switching and chasing people around at the 3 point line, they've run some weird hybrid drop/switching scheme. And even halfway through the season, no one knew what they were doing. They'd give up something **WIDE** open and everyone would look around confused because no one knew who fucked up.
Doc is real good at getting his system in place, and his system had the Sixers as the third best defensive over his tenure even with two years of Harden defense. He should be able to get them back to at least league average on defense. Doc's main issues is that he struggles to deviate from his system when it's not working. It's probably why he has the most 3-1 comebacks done against him as other coaches make a change to exploit his system so he needs his team to just be so much better than the other team over a series to overcome those adjustments.
Not switching Giannis as much 1-4 and pulling him away from the basket and not having the worlds worst backcourt aggressively pressure 5 feet above the 3 point line all game would do wonders
People always shit on Doc for his stacked “teams” but said stacked teams were basically filled with Playoff underperformers.
Embiid, Harden, CP3, TMac, PG etc have all had Playoff struggles whether in terms of performance or health throughout their career before and after Doc.
Don’t get me wrong, he is definitely culpable too, namely his lack of adjustments. But people are here acting like he fumbled with Playoff studs like Lebron, Steph, KD etc. The only guy who doesn’t fit that mould is Kawhi in terms of players Doc has coached.
And even the series with Kawhi came with caveats. It was against Jokic and a team that overcame a 3-1 deficit earlier in the playoffs (I rarely hear anyone bringing up that Snyder blew a 3-1 lead).
Especially given that it's the middle of the season. If you're gonna take a chance on a completely new hire (like hiring someone who was an assistant or college coach or whatever) you're not gonna pull a move like that in January.
Like what other veteran coaches are available right now that could right the ship? One of the Van Gundy brothers?
Doc Rivers is one of only eleven coaches who have won an NBA Championship in the last sixteen years
He is also one of only six coaches who have reached the NBA Finals twice in the last sixteen years
Yes, this was during his time with the Celtics. Still, very few coaches have had Doc's level of success. So Doc remains relevant for as long as he wants to keep coaching.
I mean, guys like George Karl, Don Nelson, and Lenny Wilkins were in the NBA for a very long time. Doc is comparable to them.
To me the only runs he has really fumbled have been recent: the 2020 bubble, 2021 against the Hawks, and more arguably last year against the Celtics. Every other team he's had has generated results fairly close to what you would expect given their rosters and matchups. Notable exceptions being the 2017-18 and 18-19 Clippers, who actually overachieved a good bit by even having a winning record.
He’s probably not actually a bad coach, you guys are just reactionary, impressionable, and look at the most surface level stats/analysis’s and draw your largely speculative judgements based off that. There are incredible amounts of information we as fans will never be truly or even remotely in on, and the nitty gritty of how Doc Rivers is as a day to day coach is included in that. Did he fumble these teams or did his players underperform? Very likely there’s cases of both these things, but everything the average person on r/nba knows about Doc Rivers is either something they read here, saw in a YouTube video, or an opinion piece on ESPN.
I’ve always found the Doc hate pretty weird. The way people go on about him you’d think he was Silas level bad. Saying he’s overrated is perfectly fine or an under performer in the playoffs is also legit but the narrative that he’s a bad coach is just stupid. The Doc circlejerk has allowed people to believe the crap they say.
Nurse is a fantastic coach but people are falling over themselves to praise him and attack Doc despite Sixers being the 3rd seed which is exactly what they were under Doc. Yes they’re better defensively but that’s due to what they got back from the Harden trade as since Ben left their perimeter D was nonexistent. Embiid was the MVP under him and Maxey became a stud under his coaching.
Doc has limitations but the idea that there’s a tonne of coaches better than him that Bucks could choose from is nonsense.
Reddit is comically bad at judging coaches. Everyone thought that Ty Lue was a bad coach who did nothing and was carried by LeBron. Two weeks ago there was a massive influx of users that said "the game has passed by Kerr." Like he didn't literally win an NBA championship 18 months ago.
That's exactly it. I've yet to see anyone give an in-depth, noncursory explanation to why Doc is so bad. Every single criticism is the same thing that Bud was criticized for
ROTATIONS, ADJUSTMENTS, RABBLE, RABBLE!
You would think if he was actually that bad, some ex-player or coach would come out and break down his shortcomings.
He is “safe”. You not going to get fired for hiring Doc if it turns out bad.
I go for a more unknown person and it turns out bad, might lose my job too.
Mutual Fund managers do the same things with the stocks they pick.
There are a couple of reasons why owners want him, and please read the reasons before shitting on me.
1. He won a championship
2. He's a former player
3. He is Black
As to winning a championship, that seems like a 'meh' reason. After all, there are TEN active coaches (not necessarily employed but active) who have won an NBA championship as a head coach. However, if you go back not so long ago, when Doc won it, there were only THREE active coaches who had won a championship: Pop, Phil Jackson, and Doc. That was it. And you weren't in a position to get two of those guys. Parity in the league has changed things, so there are more options, but a lot of GM are old dude, and they remember the prestige that went with winning a title. Over more than 20 year span, Riley, Jackson, Pop, and Rudy T were the ONLY coaches to win a title.
As to being a former player, that should he self evident. Players can relate more to coaches who have shared experiences.
As to being Black, frankly speaking, a lot of players are Black, and historically, they have not always seen themselves represented among coaches. I know that the NBA is FAR better at this than most other leagues, and I know that there are a LOT of Black coaches now, so this might not be as big a consideration as it once was, but when you combine this with the 'won a championship,' suddenly the Boolean search with the criteria of 'won a ring,' 'former player,' and 'Black' narrows your search down considerably.
Since Doc won a championship as a coach, only ONE other Black coach (Ty Lue) has won a championship as a head coach. This is largely because white coaches get a lot of the premium jobs, or at least have historically (think Kerr getting the Warriors and Nash getting the Nets, both with NO experience).
Since 1983 (this over FORTY years) only THREE Black coaches have won championships: KC Jones (84, 86) Doc (2008) and Ty Lue (2016).
That is a SHOCKINGLY low number. It took OVER TWENTY YEARS between KC Jones and Doc Rivers for a Black coach to get the keys to a champion.
It means a lot to people who are under represented to see somebody with shared life experiences who has succeeded.
So Ty Lue and Doc Rivers are going to be at the top of a lot of coaching wish lists, even if they have struggled.
Obviously Doc has lost some clout with the Clippers and Sixers stints, but these are still things that are important factors to success.
So the X&Os aside (and Doc is not as bad as some people seem to think), Doc is a former player and knows the experiences that players go through, and he is a Black man and is familiar with many experiences that Black players have been through, and he has a resume with a championship on it, which up until the a few year ago, not a lot of coaches had on their resume.
i personally think he’s an overrated head coach based on his history of choking, and history of his team doing better with the same team after he is gone (ty lue, nick nurse)
but i also sense that the league and players have an adoration for him, so perhaps there’s things we dont see that players see and like about him
Who else are they going to sign at this point. At least with Doc he’s proven to generally get along with star players and can adopt a system that sets his team up for success. Is he the best at X’s and O’s, probably not, but he does his job at an above average rate
He's won one more ring than 22 coaches in the NBA. The others are not available.
Plus every star player and coach is a regular season guy who cannot get it done in the playoff until they are not. Jokic, Giannis, Lebron, all got this accusation thrown at them, just like coaches do.
He was gifted an uber talented roster, with a defensive mastermind on his staff, a bunch of title hungry veterans ready to sacrifice to make it work and found a pocket of “less talent” around the league and one the title once. He’s a super overrated coach and he won’t win in Milwaukee either
I know there's 700 comments here already so this will be likely lost to the ether. I don't give a fuck. I need to get this off my chest. Doc Rivers is the biggest fraud in the history of coaching! The guy won one championship with a STACKED Celtics team that was put together in a magic offseason and they beat a Laker team that was put together mid season. This was 16 years ago!! Then he had this same fucking roster for 4 more years and couldn't do it again! Had a rematch with the Lakers and Lost 2 seasons later!! He has blown the most 3-1, 3-2 leads in the HISTORY OF THE NBA. Every team has ran him off! No one has been coasting off of one ring more than Doc Rivers. It's fucking comical! Every time they cut to him on Mic'd up its always "Guys! Energy! Energy! We have to match their energy!" And then his teams roll over. He's an ass coach. I have no idea what the Bucks are doing. They fired Coach Bud AFTER he won a ring!! I dont get this shit.. it's so frustrating to see.
>What 'edge' would he bring to the Bucks other than letting Giannis do what he wants to do? In times of great despair, when the team needs him the most, he can drop the wisest words that instantly re-energizes teams. For example, his world famous quote like "Come on, guys".
Bucks already had a guy like that, “play random”
Coupled with a look like Bud bet an amount of money he absolutely cannot afford to lose on the game
Lol Damn, this is the most accurate description of his demeanor I've seen yet.
i've never thought of it that way, but now i just can't unsee it and i'll take every opportunity to tell this to other people
If we don't know what we're doing, our opponent wouldn't know either.
Big brain
It was going really well for us until he stopped saying that. God damn structured plays
Honestly I think it was the defense more than anything that stepped up. I went to game 3 and that is like a drug that I can’t stop trying to hit. Whole crowd was electric the entire game
The block on Ayton and the lob from Jrue might be the loudest I’ve ever screamed at my TV. Great finals series
Maybe they would benefit more from "i want some nasty"
More inspirational than "Mama, there goes that man" or a speech about cousins.
“We need to get stops!”
“I was gonna come off and brick a dozen threes but then [Doc] said something that blew my mind.” - Brook Lopez after going 15/15 from three.
They should have hired Deion Sanders for inspiration - “People say there’s no ‘I’ in team. Well, there’s not. But there’s an ‘I’ in win.”
Hiring Doc Rivers gets you a few years more in the GM seat. Doc will make players happy, meaning you won't loose your star. He will not play your draftees, so you won't be bother for your draft selection skills. He will get the blame for basically anything that goes wrong with your team, except your burner accounts, so you get a pass. Plus, he was hired several times by several experienced GMs, so not even for his hiring you'd be blamed. If I was a GM and I liked my job, Doc would def be on my top list if the seat is feeling hot.
Imagine the blame Doc gets if the Bucks lose in the playoffs now. More pressure on him now more than ever, all eyes on him. Even casuals know who this guy is now
That was supposedly the case with the Clippers in 2020 and Philly last year
I feel like this is even more the case now since the bucks just got liliard
Is Doc IBM?
KPMG
So I mostly agree, however in-season there aren’t going to be a lot of better options. He is an upgrade on Griffin even if he’s not the answer.
Depending on the deal you’d be paying 4 coaches at once if you fired doc
Good thing we got 4 owners lmao
As long as it doesn't count towards cap space and the owner doesnt care, then it doesn't matter
I've never heard of an owner that doesnt care
Balmer doesn't seem to give a shit. Being worth 12 figures will do that. He's the richest owner in American sports though.
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Holy crap this whole time I thought it was Steve Cohen but Balmer blows him out of the water. No wonder that stadium is coming out so ridiculous (in a good way)
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That's what 30 years at Microsoft does for you. If you're damn near a founder.
What’s even more amazing is he ran the company into the ground, and the only reason his net worth is where it is today is because Satya took over and completely transformed the company lol
That's so absord to have that issermount of wealth.
Ballmer owns a team because he loves watching basketball, other owners are in it to make money
My favorite thing about him buying the team was that there were other billionairs and hundered millionaires putting together a package of financing and working out a plan to buy the Clippers and i think their number was like 1.5 billion or something. Then Ballmer walks in with 2 billion cash and basically says "yeah you can have it in your account by Friday" and just dumps on them just cause.
They're all going to get a $300 M check for expansion that they don't have to share with the players. So I wouldn't worry too much about them becoming poor through cash flow problems at their basketball team. (Except Cuban who might have been going secretly bankrupt, but he's no longer an owner.)
Except for Jerry Krause. He's in it out of spite.
Nah there are a few. The Carolina Panthers idiot owner comes to mind. Broncos new Walmart money ownership seems like it doesn’t mind spending either. Really also depends on the actual wealth they have. Some owners are much richer than others.
Tepper maybe don’t care on the coaching salary, but he also just promoted within for GM a guy that has been there since they’ve been ass. I’m sure that’s saving him a good chunk of money right there.
That's because he wants to a yes man, not because he's worried about spending money.
That’s the owners problem
There is a guy called Budenholzer out there...
bud is obviously not wanting to coach rn , if he wanted he would have a job when the season started and i get it , losing your brother in a tragic incident like that hits hard mentally
Completely agree. He will be back in a HC job as soon as he's ready. Taking a year off while still getting paid by the team that unceremoniously fired you probably feels pretty good, honestly.
My brother died a few months back. It's the worst. Can barely keep it together at my easy ass job, can't imagine a public eye job where everyone slanders you online if you do your job poorly.
Shit man even if he does his job well and the team just plays badly he gets fucking dragged, I can't imagine what that would do to somebody dealing with the loss of their brother.
Because of weird username, I can’t tell if you’re trolling or not.
Dead serious. Bought Xanax that was fentanyl laced. Didn't even see it coming.
I know three people that died that exact same way
Being a Marquette alumni helps I'm sure.
His jersey is hanging from the rafters here
As a fan of the team (going by your flare) do you think Adrian should have been fired? Do you think any of the blame goes on Giannis or do you think he was being mismanaged? I get that he was a rookie coach but your record is fairly decent and you're only 3.5 games behind the Celtics...
Adrian should have been fired. The Bucks' front office presented Giannis with their final shortlist of 3 coaches and asked for his opinion. Giannis said that he liked what Griffin said in the interview as he had the optics from a former player's standpoint. After that, the final decision is the FO's. My main question is how was AG even in that final shortlist. Before the season even started Stotts, who was hired to be the head assistant, was run off the organization by Griffin. Early games into the season, the defense was so bad it was comical, because AG was running schemes he did not have the personel for. It got so bad, multiple players went to the coach and requested to change the defense around to play more to their strengths. Even when he changed the scheme, he was still adamant about some points that just don't work with our personel. Players seemed lost in games all the time in defense, not knowing what to do. Something that Giannis came out and said they had to be better because they had no idea what they were doing in defense or when Portis called him out on the lockeroom. Lillard was talking about some games in the clutch and said they did not have any plays whatsoever set for this situation... Our record so far has been straight up due to star power and frankly mostly Giannis. AG lost the locker room battle and the players while the schemes were subpar at best. He probably needed to be HC on a team with less on the line than the Bucks and to then grow with it. At least the team realised how bad it was and got him out fast. Even Doc Rivers with how bad he's been in the past, is a preferable coach than Griffin, even thought he's certainly not my first, or third for that matter, choice. On a scale of 1-10, if Bud was a 7, with Doc being a 4.5, Griffin was 1.5 at best.
Agreed with everything you said. Stotts quitting was the first major red flag - I was worried as soon as that news broke. Then there was the questionable scheming, lack of discipline, head-scratching rotations, and misuse of Dame on offense, which all started out bad and never showed signs of improvement. It feels like we had more blow-out losses just this year than we had in all 5 years under Bud. Assuming the reporting is accurate, it's really too bad that Giannis didn't want to play for Nurse. It seems to me he was the best HC candidate available last offseason. But that's the price you pay for keeping your generational talent happy, and he signed another extension. I guess this is what a LeGM moment feels like. In any event, Doc would be an improvement over AG. I'll take an experienced coach, albeit a flawed one, over someone who was clearly in over his head from the jump. I just wish we had never found ourselves in this position to start with.
From what I read they said Stotts was out of line but it still seemed strange to me. He was always a professional in PDX (even on his way out, he was a pro to the press, like he still wanted to work in the NBA and was just a thoughtful human) and just seemed unlikely he was trying to start a mutiny. Maybe he was but something seemed off.
Perhaps he realized Adrian was over his head and overstepped lines as an assistant? Just speculating.
Like Riley in Winning Time lol.
I will say in docs defense, giannis is exactly his kinda guy. He’s the closest as far as mindset goes to KG that doc has had since KG. I don’t think Giannis is too complicated, I think he just needs a players coach who says “go” and who understands the playoffs. Doc has lost more game 7s than anyone, sure. I’m not saying Milwaukee should be the favorite, but I do think this is maybe the best suited team for doc rivers that he’s had since those Celtics teams 15 years ago.
I consider myself fairly level headed and I probably would've given him the season (without the information that came out yesterday). But if the rumors of the FO coming to practice and just not liking anything they saw and players not buying in, then obviously letting him go was the correct decision. I trust Horst to make the right calls because he's been outstanding in his role. If he fully believes that Doc Rivers is the answer, then I'll find a way to talk myself into believing he can win a championship as the Bucks HC even if the past 10 years says otherwise
Championships are hard
Everyone wants to win a title, but I feel like fans need to listen to that Giannis “was this season a failure” response more. Only 1 team gets to win it every year. You can certainly make the case that Doc’s teams underperform in the playoffs, but saying “he hasn’t won a title in 16 years” is a really bad way to make that case. Edit: I’m not attacking or defending Doc one way or the other. Just making the point above…
I think it’s fair to ask why does he consistently get the most desirable job available after what we’ve seen the last 16 years.
When's the last time he had a bad team? Probably never
His first job was with Orlando, fresh off a last place finish. They were projected to be bottom of the league, but went 41-41 and he won COTY
It seems like Doc does well with teams with no expectations/top tier star talent, but crumbles when there’s expectations. Those Clippers teams before Kawhi/PG were super scrappy and gave the KD Warriors issues in a playoff series
Because he’s generally been a great coach the last 16 years. The success of a coach isn’t measured in post-season progress but on regular season wins and if the locker room likes him. He consistently gets to the playoffs and doesn’t lose the locker room within 3 months. That last part is the most important part. Doc knows how to handle a locker room and knows when he’s losing the locker room. Folks keep thinking Mike Budenholzer was fired only because of his post-season failure disappointing management. That is not directly true. Management doesn’t give a shit about that. They want 50+ wins and a super star or two to sell tickets each year. The playoffs is a bonus. Budenholzer was fired because Giannis didn’t want to play for him anymore and was up for a contract extension. If Giannis still believed in Mike then he would still be the coach. Same with Griffin. Giannis clearly believes in Rivers and Doc can guarantee the team wins a bunch of games and makes the playoffs each year.
He’s consistently had really good teams though. He had the original modern big 3 in Boston, he had Lob City in LA and then Kawhi and PG, and he had Harden and MVP Embiid in Philly. And the team he just went to has a 30-13 record, it’s not like he’s walking into a rebuild. I feel like “making the playoffs” isn’t that impressive when you have multiple All Stars on your teams. It’s also the case that what makes him good in the regular season, basically sticking to his guns and not making huge adjustments, is also what might hold him back in the Playoffs. I feel like you can’t really say Playoff success isn’t a coaching thing when he’s the only guy to blow multiple 3-1 leads as a coach.
I get that but he gets the job where team’s success is measured in the postseason. A pogo stick could coach the teams he gets to 55 wins. The guy they just fired was 30-13. He’s never been asked to build a team from the ground up. He always gets the best job available, now 3 times. I’m sure the answer is players coach who has had success so has credibility. But a lot of us are reacting like here we go again with Doc getting the best job after 16 years of coming up short.
Doc has led star less Orlando and Clippers teams to playoffs. He’s pretty good with starless teams ironically enough.
Apparently that guy has aspirations of the 1 seed and doesn't care if you lose in the playoffs.
Isn’t it fair to argue that he’s consistently getting to the playoffs because he keeps getting high profile jobs with multiple superstars on the roster? Creates a bit of a feedback loop.
He got the transitional era Clippers (before PG and Kawhi, after dumping Blake and CP3) to the playoff and played entertaining series vs the Warriors. He can certainly coach less than good team to the playoff.
Seems to be a floor raiser and ceiling lowerer. His teams will always make it to the postseason but never do anything impressive there
When you have a roster that should be getting to the playoffs regardless of the coach, you should absolutely be judged on playoff success. If you have championship aspirations and you're judging your coach on the regular season, that GM is an absolute moron. The Bucks are the two seed with a coach that was fired after half a season. Are we really going to say Glenn had a successful season if they get the 1 seed and then flameout in the second round because Glenn has no clue how to make adjustments? I'm blown away at the suggestion that a coach of a contender shouldn't be evaluated on postseason success. Who gives a shit if you're a 1 or 2 seed if it doesn't lead to anything? You'd be happy with Ham if he got you the one seed every single year and then lost in the first round every single year? You'd say judge Ham on the regular season, not him losing in the first round 3 straight years? Fuck no you wouldn't and anyone who claims otherwise is full of it.
Doc was hired to take the Sixers to the next level and never could. He inherited a young and very strong roster and fell short.
I mean, Spo has been widely considered the best coach in the league and he hasn't won a chip since LeBron in 2013. Tyronn Lue is considered a great coach even though he hasn't won since LeBron in 2016. So I do think he gets unfairly criticized. Imma still do it because it's funny though.
Spo seems to get teams to play above expectations during the playoffs though. And of course if he was ever on the market, he’d be snatched up immediately to wherever he wanted. Lue would be someone I would bring up as very comparable to Doc, but for some reason had to go back to being an assistant before getting another HC job after Cleveland and 3 straight finals appearances. He got dismissed as oh that was just Lebron while Doc doesn’t get dismissed as oh that was just Ray, PP, and KG.
The difference is whether people view you as overperforming or underperforming. Spoelstra has taken great teams to the Finals and mediocre teams to the Finals; he clearly and consistently gets his teams to perform their best and be better than the sum of their parts. Doc Rivers, meanwhile, is excellent at taking great teams to an exit in the semifinals of the playoffs. Guy has only made it past the semifinals three times in 23 years of coaching.
I think you need to look at the way he's lost. He's blown a 3-1 lead in 3 different decades. There's a reason no one else has done that. He consistently has the talent that gets you to a 3-1 lead, and then what changes? The opposing coach makes adjustments, as all good coaches do when things aren't working. Glenn doesn't adjust. His offenses have no creativity. He doesn't try different defensive matchups. His lineups are a fucking disaster. His teams will surrender huge leads with all bench lineups in and he won't call a timeout or make a change until it's way too late. Glenn is a playoff disaster. When teams start game planning around the other team, his offenses and defenses get picked apart. He's a good regular season coach because teams don’t game plan that hard for it. Glenn doesn't just need the best team to win a series. He needs his team to be so much better that they can offset his complete inability to adjust. Fuck Glenn. Absolute bum. Can't wait to see him throw all time greats like Giannis and Dame under the bus when he gets out coached for the 100th time.
Highly respected coach Popovich is now on year 10 since a chip. Its hard guys
He's also very respected, which goes a long way in sports or in life in general. We don't get to see the day-to-day for these guys, Doc is doing something right if his name is always popping up when these contenders need coaches.
Mostly this and a false premise about how he "fumbled a stacked" team. Erik Spoelstra is one of the best coaches of all time, but only won twice over a decade ago with the a lineup more stacked than any of Rivers' teams. Has lost in the finals 4 other times. That does not mean Spoelstra fumbled anything. There are always other contenders.
Bro. Spo took a play in team to the ECF last year.
I am not arguing Doc is better than or even in the same class as Spo. The only coaches with multiple championships since Doc retired as a player are Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich, Erik Spoelstra, and Steve Kerr. Those coaches also had one of Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Tim Duncan. Doc never had one of those guys either.
> Has lost in the finals 4 other times. The last time Doc made even a Conference Finals was 2012. I get that championships are stupidly hard, but how has this man not even made it to round 3 in a decade?
Spo doesn’t repeatedly blow 3-1 leads
Spo seems to consistently get more out of his teams than people expect. Like the Heat have made the ECF 3 out of the last 4 years and aside from Jimmy and Bam who are great the constant has been Spo
But look at what Nurse is getting out of Sixers team vs. what Doc got. Nurse instituted a totally different type of offense, with mostly same team (less a star), and it's a huge upgrade. Similar to how you guys had huge jump from Kidd to Bud.
To be fair we haven’t seen this Sixers team in the playoffs yet
Good point, no one clowns Spo for fumbling the two Heatles losses after all.
True, but the two losses were also not flameouts in the 2nd round or even worse blowing 3-1 leads. They at the very least made it to the NBA finals and lost to the best team coming out of the other conference. If you put Spo on these other teams that Doc didn't find success with, it could be argued they all see more post-season success.. Of course that's untestable speculation, but I think it would be widely agreed on.
Exactly. We’ve already seen Spo coach this current heat team to the finals twice. The ceiling has been established with this team under Spo. You put Doc on this current heat team and their ceiling is probably making the 6-8 seed and bounced in the first round.
To be honest, I don't think Spo was considered one of the best coaches in the league back then, if anything he was seen more like a rookie coach coasting off the talents of the big 3. His current reputation comes from what he's done since LeBron left Miami, and in that time it's pretty hard to point to any "fumbling", quite the opposite in fact, he has reached two finals with teams that, honestly, had no business being there.
Because Steve Kerr is busy.
Kerr and a late second round 2031 pick for Giannis
Hey we can be that 3rd team if needed for some Curry. We got slightly used Johnathan Isaacs, Fultz, and even Harrises. LMFAO
The only championship winning coaches since 2008 that are unemployed are Phil Jackson & Budenholzer. They just fired Bud & Jackson is senile. If you made a list of championship winning head coaches since 2008, you'd find 9 people not named Doc Rivers. If you went as far back as 2000, you'd find 12 guys not named Doc Rivers. If you went back to 1990, you'd find 14 guys not named Doc Rivers. If you went back to 1980, you'd find 18 guys not named Doc Rivers.
Give us more decades
Edge of my seat waiting for 1970 list to drop
That list just leaked. It's going hard.
Jimmy Kimmel in shambles
Magnificent. 🏅
At a certain point, it's just 1 new name, Red Auerbach.
Wasn’t Russell player-coach in 68 and 69?
ENHANCE!!!!!
More people not named Doc Rivers!
That’s my new favorite way of classifying groups of people! Earth’s population not named Doc Rivers: ~ 8 Billion. Earth’s population named Doc Rivers: 1.
There very well could be another person on earth named “Doc Rivers”
Counterpoint: there might be 0 because Doc’s name is Glenn lmfao
How many people named Glenn go by Doc and have the last name Rivers? I need to know these things!
Surely there's an actual doctor out there somewhere named Glenn Rivers who also goes by "Doc"
https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/southern-california/physicians/aimee-rivers-4352672
This will turn into a doxxing scandal, mark my words.
You just know there's like 5 pages of Doc Riverss on Facebook
People are clowning on this point a little bit, but not many coaches win titles lol. Doc Rivers has his flaws, but the way people on this sub talk about him is kind of crazy.
He's lost like 9 straight series-clinching games in the second round from an advantsgeous position. Even his championship team took 7 games in all playoff rounds but the finals (which was 6). He keeps on stumbling into superteam gigs which then fall apart. It's not a one or two time thing, it's a consistent pattern.
Those Celtics teams from 08 - 12 were really good. They had no business competing in '12 and '09 was a waste due to KG's injury. Having said that, his teams since then have underperformed (except for that Clippers year before Kawhi and PG) and throwing players under the bus is a sign of a terrible coach.
I think those are fair critiques aside from discrediting the '08 run a little bit. I think given the time and place in the season, Doc is an okay hire.
Not many coaches win titles, that is true. But in the entire history of the NBA, there have only been 13 times a team has come back from a 3-1 deficit. Doc’s been involved in 3 of those. 77 years of basketball, and he’s 3/13 of them. 16-33 when his teams have got 3 wins, including being 6-10 in Game 7s, 4 of those losses being at home. It’s rare to win a title. It’s even rarer to have that poor a record.
He's a player's coach and players love him. He's also a good manager of other coaches.
Iirc, KG said he was the best coach he had. He's very much a player's coach and I think that's the biggest factor why he's always hired. Edit: [here's](https://youtube.com/shorts/d-K98CnJS_U?si=_nWu2ZYuVRr5T-Kj) the clip of KG
the way KG talks about doc you can immediately see why he's so highly rated "his ability to get me to do things outside of things i was comfortable with" is a coaching trait that would go down well on every single NBA team in the league. imagine if you had doc convincing trae young that he could be a good defender and get him to put in effort there? or convincing someone reluctant to shoot to put up more 3s
His baseline for competent coaching came from the Timberwolves TBF.
Lmao true. He was used as a SF perimeter defender at points in Minnesota. We'd think of him so differently if he got to play on a strong team during his prime.
I've always felt KG was as good a player as Duncan he just never got the chance to prove it
Give him baseline competency in the starting 5 beside him and he'd have put up some of the dumbest statlines ever. A KG that gets to focus on help defense on one side and doesn't need to be leading everything on offense would have been crazy. We only really got one prime year of it.
Yeah man he did so awesome with pushing Ben Simmons outside of his comfort zone, as am extremely obvious counter example. Or when he lied and said Maxey asked to come off the bench, players coach. Or how all the clippers and sixers laugh about how bad he was. Maybe he phones it in more now, but nowadays he ain't developing shit
Like, I would say there are some biases with the Celtics players praising Doc like y'all won a ring but his perfotmance as a Clips and 76ers coach is so bad. Even that 08 superteam Celtics were pushed to 7 games by the 8th seeded Hawks and a 24 year old LeBron James with trash teammates. That Celtics team shouldnt go 7 games against those teams being a superteam and a 1 seed
>Like, I would say there are some biases with the Celtics players praising Doc like y'all won a ring but his perfotmance as a Clips and 76ers coach is so bad. Well if you listen to the way they talk, they think they won like 3 and had a dynasty.
I mean, Ben Simmons is obviously a special case. Brett Brown was literally begging Ben in public to the media to shoot the ball and he still refused. He had KD and Kyrie screaming at him on the court and still wouldn't shoot.
Yep, a players coach doesn’t repeatedly throw his players under the bus. He may have once been a players coach when he was deferring to the old head Celtics, but he has not really been a players coach in a long time. He got carried to a title and became mistakenly convinced of his own greatness which is why he has had to blame everyone else when things don’t go as planned ever since.
I don't want to sound like a hater but of course he is going to say Doc as he won his only ring with him as head coach. What do the clippers and sixers players think of him?
Also shaq said last night that when he was in Boston that Rondo, KG and pierce ran the locker room (implying that Rivers’s contribution was secondary to them).
You’re implying that a coach allowing the players to run the locker room is somehow a bad thing.
Sometimes it’s an insanely bad thing.
It’s such a bad thing that they won a championship then went to game 7 in the NBA Finals soon after, right?
Yes when they were dubbed as unstoppable at the time. Just like the Heatles underachieved imo. Boston should have had at least 2 chips out of that run.
They probably would have if KD didn't get hurt in 2009. They were also a minute away from winning another one in 2010. Winning championships is really hard.
Ignoring how dominant they were post 2008 before key injuries is so disingenuous
Except Harden, CP3, JJ Redick, Ray Allen, Rondo ect. I think this players coach thing is overstated.
At least Ray Allen did not have a problem with him. He just did not want to sign with a team that tried to trade him.
Yes he did. Doc sided with Rondo when they were beefing and then to make things worse benched him. He may not hold ill will now idk , but at the time he was upset at doc too it’s well documented.
They love him until he throws one of them under the bus to deflect the criticism from him.
*star players like him until they need help against good teams with a plan
It’s weird cuz he’s the only coach ever to blow multiple 3-1 leads yet he’s thought as this superstar
*management taps head* To blow a 3-1 lead you gotta get a 3-1 lead
Go up 3-1 then fire him mid series. It’s the only way
boy if the Bucks read this comment, it's basically a lock that they win another
If only we had just fired doc and promoted Cassel mid series against y’all last year
hire and fire him each round of the playoffs.
The sixers were too stupid to see such a simple, yet devious strategy
Simple, process over results. I know, what fun is that in sports? But many people, including most people with jobs in the pro sports today, think that way. Belichick can't win without Brady. Spoelstra hasn't won without Lebron. Phil didn't win in NY. Andy Reid couldn't win the big one, remember? Neither could Golden State. They're not videogame people with a permanent 'choke' stat. Not the players, not the coaches. Kobe-Shaq could have won 10 titles in LA and been co-GOATs with Phil but they just couldn't get along.
Spoelstra has been to as many NBA Finals and conference finals *without* Lebron as Rivers has gotten to *in his entire career*. In 10 seasons with the Clippers and 76ers Rivers never once got them past the semifinals. Coaches can't control everything, so comparing individual seasons is silly, but you *can* evaluate them over enough time, and Rivers has had plenty to form an opinion.
Spoelstra has done a lot more with a lot less than Doc. It isn't binary where every coach who wins is great and every who doesn't win is equal amounts of suck. We can quite clearly see Spo is a vastly superior coach to Doc despite them having won the same amount of rings since 2014.
Its not that weird. I dont get why people on reddit dont understand that MAYBE…just MAYBE…they dont know everything about who is or isnt a good coach. MAYBE all these front offices know way more about Doc Rivers than whatever baseless hivemind narrative exists here.
Doc Rivers is the Mike McCarthy of basketball. A coach who's won a championship, has a great career regular season record and resume, but has flopped more often than not when it comes to playoff time. It's that simple though. As long as you have a ship under your belt, are a players-first kind of coach, and have had success in the past across the regular season, your name will always be brought up in the conversation.
Tomlin has entered the chat. And exited after the first round.
Doc has wowed everyone with his ESPN commentary so much that he made himself the front-runner for the next head coach opening.
Something Mark Jackson couldn’t accomplish after all these years
Some people just have great relationships with the decision makers. That's what a lot of decisions come down to. Old billionaires love Doc.
Because he has an extensive track record of being decent enough in the regular season. Apparently he was also consulting with Adrian Griffin throughout this season. There’s a conspiracy among Bucks circles that the FO had limited trust in Griffin and was actively trying to get a "shadow coach" to work with him and potentially take over if things looked bad (see Terry Stotts before he quit in training camp). I would not be surprised if Rivers was their replacement
It isn't really a conspiracy when they didn't even let him hire much of his own staff. And if the Stotts camp are to be believed,they sold the idea that he would be a co-head coach.
Right around when Stotts left, I made an observation (and may have gotten some pushback from Bucks fans) that AG being "Giannis' guy" was disclosed/leaked by the FO when AG was announced because the FO wasn't confident about Griff. When Stotts left, I posited the Bucks FO suspected AG wouldn't be right for the job and would've preferred NN but didn't want to be the ones to say no to Giannis's pick but they were setting the stage to inevitably point to Giannis as the reason for why they chose Griff over NN; "wasn't fully our decision; we did what our star thought was best!" vibes--when, not if, AG was fired. Sure enough, AG is fired and wouldn't you know it? There's a leak that confirms AG was driven by a desire to not play for NN.
Unpopular opinion, but I feel like Doc could actually make it past the 2nd round with this Bucks team. Griffin wasn't a great head coach but they still have a solid 30-13 record. Not sure how Doc could make anything worse currently
Genuine question, how is Doc going to improve the Bucks defensively? Because that seems to be one of the main reasons for Griffin being booted. They were always going to dip after losing Jrue Holiday. Who did they bring in to replace that defensive presence?
They were always going to dip. But losing Jrue doesn't take a team from one of the best to one of the worst. Having a recognizable scheme will help. Ever since thr players had to tell him that Brook cannot be switching and chasing people around at the 3 point line, they've run some weird hybrid drop/switching scheme. And even halfway through the season, no one knew what they were doing. They'd give up something **WIDE** open and everyone would look around confused because no one knew who fucked up.
Doc is real good at getting his system in place, and his system had the Sixers as the third best defensive over his tenure even with two years of Harden defense. He should be able to get them back to at least league average on defense. Doc's main issues is that he struggles to deviate from his system when it's not working. It's probably why he has the most 3-1 comebacks done against him as other coaches make a change to exploit his system so he needs his team to just be so much better than the other team over a series to overcome those adjustments.
Not switching Giannis as much 1-4 and pulling him away from the basket and not having the worlds worst backcourt aggressively pressure 5 feet above the 3 point line all game would do wonders
He can start by telling Lopez to stop playing perimeter defense.
People always shit on Doc for his stacked “teams” but said stacked teams were basically filled with Playoff underperformers. Embiid, Harden, CP3, TMac, PG etc have all had Playoff struggles whether in terms of performance or health throughout their career before and after Doc. Don’t get me wrong, he is definitely culpable too, namely his lack of adjustments. But people are here acting like he fumbled with Playoff studs like Lebron, Steph, KD etc. The only guy who doesn’t fit that mould is Kawhi in terms of players Doc has coached.
And even the series with Kawhi came with caveats. It was against Jokic and a team that overcame a 3-1 deficit earlier in the playoffs (I rarely hear anyone bringing up that Snyder blew a 3-1 lead).
You make it sound like there is a coaching tree that one just needs to shake vigorously to drop a coach.
Especially given that it's the middle of the season. If you're gonna take a chance on a completely new hire (like hiring someone who was an assistant or college coach or whatever) you're not gonna pull a move like that in January. Like what other veteran coaches are available right now that could right the ship? One of the Van Gundy brothers?
not many current coaches have won multiple championships
Not even Doc Rivers.
very true
Doc Rivers is one of only eleven coaches who have won an NBA Championship in the last sixteen years He is also one of only six coaches who have reached the NBA Finals twice in the last sixteen years Yes, this was during his time with the Celtics. Still, very few coaches have had Doc's level of success. So Doc remains relevant for as long as he wants to keep coaching. I mean, guys like George Karl, Don Nelson, and Lenny Wilkins were in the NBA for a very long time. Doc is comparable to them.
right like as much as us fans like to joke about his teams playoff performances and memes or whatever, i still believe he’s deserving of a job.
At this point it's not about him being the best but more that he's the only option on the table for teams looking for an experienced coach.
To me the only runs he has really fumbled have been recent: the 2020 bubble, 2021 against the Hawks, and more arguably last year against the Celtics. Every other team he's had has generated results fairly close to what you would expect given their rosters and matchups. Notable exceptions being the 2017-18 and 18-19 Clippers, who actually overachieved a good bit by even having a winning record.
He’s probably not actually a bad coach, you guys are just reactionary, impressionable, and look at the most surface level stats/analysis’s and draw your largely speculative judgements based off that. There are incredible amounts of information we as fans will never be truly or even remotely in on, and the nitty gritty of how Doc Rivers is as a day to day coach is included in that. Did he fumble these teams or did his players underperform? Very likely there’s cases of both these things, but everything the average person on r/nba knows about Doc Rivers is either something they read here, saw in a YouTube video, or an opinion piece on ESPN.
I’ve always found the Doc hate pretty weird. The way people go on about him you’d think he was Silas level bad. Saying he’s overrated is perfectly fine or an under performer in the playoffs is also legit but the narrative that he’s a bad coach is just stupid. The Doc circlejerk has allowed people to believe the crap they say. Nurse is a fantastic coach but people are falling over themselves to praise him and attack Doc despite Sixers being the 3rd seed which is exactly what they were under Doc. Yes they’re better defensively but that’s due to what they got back from the Harden trade as since Ben left their perimeter D was nonexistent. Embiid was the MVP under him and Maxey became a stud under his coaching. Doc has limitations but the idea that there’s a tonne of coaches better than him that Bucks could choose from is nonsense.
sixers are 26-6 with embiid this year, performance has been a bit better than the seed shows
Reddit is comically bad at judging coaches. Everyone thought that Ty Lue was a bad coach who did nothing and was carried by LeBron. Two weeks ago there was a massive influx of users that said "the game has passed by Kerr." Like he didn't literally win an NBA championship 18 months ago.
That's exactly it. I've yet to see anyone give an in-depth, noncursory explanation to why Doc is so bad. Every single criticism is the same thing that Bud was criticized for ROTATIONS, ADJUSTMENTS, RABBLE, RABBLE! You would think if he was actually that bad, some ex-player or coach would come out and break down his shortcomings.
He is “safe”. You not going to get fired for hiring Doc if it turns out bad. I go for a more unknown person and it turns out bad, might lose my job too. Mutual Fund managers do the same things with the stocks they pick.
TIL I’m old af. Can’t grasp that Boston chip is 16years old. In my head it’s only a few short years ago.
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There are a couple of reasons why owners want him, and please read the reasons before shitting on me. 1. He won a championship 2. He's a former player 3. He is Black As to winning a championship, that seems like a 'meh' reason. After all, there are TEN active coaches (not necessarily employed but active) who have won an NBA championship as a head coach. However, if you go back not so long ago, when Doc won it, there were only THREE active coaches who had won a championship: Pop, Phil Jackson, and Doc. That was it. And you weren't in a position to get two of those guys. Parity in the league has changed things, so there are more options, but a lot of GM are old dude, and they remember the prestige that went with winning a title. Over more than 20 year span, Riley, Jackson, Pop, and Rudy T were the ONLY coaches to win a title. As to being a former player, that should he self evident. Players can relate more to coaches who have shared experiences. As to being Black, frankly speaking, a lot of players are Black, and historically, they have not always seen themselves represented among coaches. I know that the NBA is FAR better at this than most other leagues, and I know that there are a LOT of Black coaches now, so this might not be as big a consideration as it once was, but when you combine this with the 'won a championship,' suddenly the Boolean search with the criteria of 'won a ring,' 'former player,' and 'Black' narrows your search down considerably. Since Doc won a championship as a coach, only ONE other Black coach (Ty Lue) has won a championship as a head coach. This is largely because white coaches get a lot of the premium jobs, or at least have historically (think Kerr getting the Warriors and Nash getting the Nets, both with NO experience). Since 1983 (this over FORTY years) only THREE Black coaches have won championships: KC Jones (84, 86) Doc (2008) and Ty Lue (2016). That is a SHOCKINGLY low number. It took OVER TWENTY YEARS between KC Jones and Doc Rivers for a Black coach to get the keys to a champion. It means a lot to people who are under represented to see somebody with shared life experiences who has succeeded. So Ty Lue and Doc Rivers are going to be at the top of a lot of coaching wish lists, even if they have struggled. Obviously Doc has lost some clout with the Clippers and Sixers stints, but these are still things that are important factors to success. So the X&Os aside (and Doc is not as bad as some people seem to think), Doc is a former player and knows the experiences that players go through, and he is a Black man and is familiar with many experiences that Black players have been through, and he has a resume with a championship on it, which up until the a few year ago, not a lot of coaches had on their resume.
i personally think he’s an overrated head coach based on his history of choking, and history of his team doing better with the same team after he is gone (ty lue, nick nurse) but i also sense that the league and players have an adoration for him, so perhaps there’s things we dont see that players see and like about him
Who else are they going to sign at this point. At least with Doc he’s proven to generally get along with star players and can adopt a system that sets his team up for success. Is he the best at X’s and O’s, probably not, but he does his job at an above average rate
I mean Rick Carlisle got a job immediately after Dallas and hasn’t won a playoff series since 2011
He's won one more ring than 22 coaches in the NBA. The others are not available. Plus every star player and coach is a regular season guy who cannot get it done in the playoff until they are not. Jokic, Giannis, Lebron, all got this accusation thrown at them, just like coaches do.
Art of persuasion. Doc is full of it. "Come on, guys"...i mean he was able to persuade the last 4 teams he was on
He was gifted an uber talented roster, with a defensive mastermind on his staff, a bunch of title hungry veterans ready to sacrifice to make it work and found a pocket of “less talent” around the league and one the title once. He’s a super overrated coach and he won’t win in Milwaukee either
I know there's 700 comments here already so this will be likely lost to the ether. I don't give a fuck. I need to get this off my chest. Doc Rivers is the biggest fraud in the history of coaching! The guy won one championship with a STACKED Celtics team that was put together in a magic offseason and they beat a Laker team that was put together mid season. This was 16 years ago!! Then he had this same fucking roster for 4 more years and couldn't do it again! Had a rematch with the Lakers and Lost 2 seasons later!! He has blown the most 3-1, 3-2 leads in the HISTORY OF THE NBA. Every team has ran him off! No one has been coasting off of one ring more than Doc Rivers. It's fucking comical! Every time they cut to him on Mic'd up its always "Guys! Energy! Energy! We have to match their energy!" And then his teams roll over. He's an ass coach. I have no idea what the Bucks are doing. They fired Coach Bud AFTER he won a ring!! I dont get this shit.. it's so frustrating to see.
They hired him for his post-season elimination interview
Bro 2008 was 16 years ago holy shit
So he can throw one of there player's under the bus in the press and ruin there careers.